


one. the mirror

by 10008



Series: Ashes of Arcadia [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Replay Value AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-03 05:26:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11525472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/10008/pseuds/10008
Summary: You're fifteen years old when you first meet him, under the alien night sky, and when you look at him all you can see are the cracks.





	one. the mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sburb Glitch FAQ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/340777) by [GodsGiftToGrinds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodsGiftToGrinds/pseuds/GodsGiftToGrinds). 



You're fifteen years old when you first meet him, under the alien night sky. The moons are bright and full, and he smiles to you like an old friend, and welcomes you back.

He's bright and charismatic, physically fit, attractive and kind. He's Space, and you're Time, he's a Smith and you're a Grace, and when you look at him all you can see are the cracks.

He wears the cloth of the universe, and holds in his hands possibility itself. Behind him trails a hood of fallen stars and emptiness, and sometimes you think, as you watch from beyond the veil of time, it's only when he puts it up that he's most himself.

You see him standing at the end of the line, absorbed in a sound of creation you cannot hear. You see him fighting with your team in trained synchronicity as the sky rains down earth and fire. You see him organizing, planning, head bowed with your Muse over charts and figures splayed across the floors of five different magicants. You see him exploring dungeons with the hero of Breath, you see him visiting his server's home. You see him climbing to the first gate, and you see him enter the medium. You push back, further, past the night the meteors began to fall, past the day the drones came knocking, past the hour he woke up, past the moment he appeared in that forsaken universe.

You push and push against the barrier of worlds, and suddenly the emptiness lights up with stars, and a thousand lifetimes flash before you. And you see him again, this time in robes of shifting amber and windswept tans, dunes on his chest and hood covering his eyes. He's on his knees, crying, and around him are the bodies.

He's not the Smith of Space anymore, not the leader you know, not the confident replayer, firm in his convictions. He's young, and scared, and the blood that drips down his cheeks is not all from his ruined eyes. He's the Seer of Sand who saw all the cracks but couldn't stop them from forming, from connecting, from shattering. He's the one who planned but never acted, who knew the truth but always lied, who learned the lessons the game taught a little too well, and survived. He's the one who won the reward, and who hates himself for it in that same instant.

You reach out and wipe the tears of blood from his cheeks, and hug him tightly for the briefest moment before space creaks and throws you back to the present, leaving him staring sightless into the void, searching for the source of a warmth that never was.

You glance at the hole your cataclysm tore in time, and the memories it held within, and you smile, and Time slides. Your garb of blood and rust fades into gold and dust, and you're once again the Sage of Sand who brought a session to its knees to create a universe, who stared sightlessly at the crimson-soaked remains of Skaia and the Lands that orbited it, who held the bodies and sang of grief, who happily quested on a land of shifting sands and broken tombs, who was bright and hopeful and eleven years old, and played a game and destroyed a world. You didn't let that world's sacrifice go to waste, and you won't let this one's either.

But you aren't the Sage any longer, just as he is not the Seer, and they deserve to know.

He finds you, weapon raised above the Mesa. You've mapped the route they must take, and he knows this, and he still came to stop you, so you pull, just slightly, and he tugs a second too late, and sends them all flying along the predestined path.

And you smile one last time, knowing that this is how Time is meant to flow, that none of your visions held you within them, and that success was within reach.

And you bring your weapon down, and you

_scratch_  
\--  
((You realize, years later, when you wake up to his teary, smiling face, surrounded by the your replayees' young dancestors, that you weren't the Sage anymore, and you'd forgotten how malleable SBURB's set in stone prophecies were.))

((You roll Seer the next time around, and make the same mistake again.))

((There's no fix this time.))


End file.
